The 'Other' Doctor
by AwkwardAuburn2
Summary: This one-shot is what I envisioned Rose's reaction to getting left in an alternative world with ten2 would be. Hope you enjoy!


**This is just a one-shot I wrote after watching the episode with David Tennant no. 2. It's basically what I imagined Rose's reaction to the second doctor would be. Hope you enjoy.  
PS. I don't own any rights.**

**The 'Other' Doctor  
**Sometimes I forget. I forget that he isn't here beside me laughing eccentrically at some lost memory we never shared. He talks like him. He looks like him. He thinks like him. But he's not the same, is he? Sometimes I convince myself that he's the same man I travelled through the stars with, the same man who left me on that beach, and the same man who could never quite manage to tell me that he loved me. It's a bittersweet existence, he is here with me yet so distant, a copy.

But he hates it. He hates the fact that he is not the same, he is the doctor, but he is not my doctor with whom I sailed through time and space. I can see that his eyes are so much younger, not quite as wise but a lot brighter, not quite as scarred with the weight of the universe upon his overburdened shoulders.

Sometimes I see him angry, frustrated that with all his wisdom he can't help save the universe, he can't run away in his tardis because he isn't the "real" doctor. In his mind he is the same, his memories of what he did are real to him which troubles him that they are merely glimpses at someone else's life. But I can still tell that he loves me.

Sometimes I find him staring, for those moments he stands a little taller and his eyes gleam a little brighter. It's as though he can't believe that every second he is here with me, forever. No danger, no immortality. He is not a god, he is but a man, a rather remarkable man that is, but human all the same. He stares because he's used to only observing what a god could never have, what the doctor, time lord, protector of earth, could never achieve. He is happy that he can spend the rest of his life with me, that the responsibility of the world is not for him and his life is his own. That makes him smile.

However, when he stops smiling I can tell that all is not well and he is torn, because he knows that this shouldn't be his life, he should be in the tardis, soaring into danger and saving lives. Be he isn't, because he can't. All that wisdom, and courage and morality and no way to fix the world. He sees poverty and destruction and it wounds him because he hasn't even a screwdriver to fix it.

I miss that manic smile when he figures out how to save the world...I've forgotten again...that he is different to the doctor I knew. They are so similar. Sometimes...I feel a surging anger that _he_ never saw this. All his brilliance and my doctor couldn't have seen this. He left me and a...effect of war because his world couldn't handle it. And he left me to keep him company while he sailed away in his tardis with the brilliant part time-Lord Donna. When you can't decide which one of them you love better, make another one of yourself and it'll be grand.

He felt guilty that he had moved on without me, so he gave me himself to make up for it. But I guess I am happy. He makes me happy. John Smith, that's what he calls himself. He is incredibly kind and warm and he may only have one, completely human, heart, but he has given it entirely to me. Sometimes I think that he is not my doctor and that this is not how it should be, but he makes me happy. My doctor makes me so very happy. I can see him now, sitting at the fire, staring into its depths as though he can see time through the flames.

He still believes he is not all he should be and we are not all we could be. It hurts to see the ... in his eyes. His empathetic eyes are like two coals in a blazing fire. Passion. Hope. But the fire is dwindling, dying so the coals burn with desperation, knowing that their time is not limitless and the fire will eventually fall. His eyes whisper to me with a silent desperation, screaming that this is not supposed to be the way. The fire should be immortal, a glorious inferno watching the eons pass from a distance.

I want to let him know that he is all he should be and I am happy with him. He feels as though I settled for him, that he was a lesser option and, for a while, I believed that myself but...you can worship and glorify a god. You can follow them and die for them but once you begin o love them the world becomes a dangerous place, because you cannot, you must not tether the immortal. They may try to dwell about you and convince themselves and you that your life can be lived with them but ultimately you fade into their endless realm of guilt tainted memories. You merge into a vague haze of regrets.

However, you can fall in love with a mortal, a human. Though you aren't eternal, your devotion is perpetual. Sometimes I think and it seems too simple, too easy and too good to be true. I can grow old with him and live out my life with him. There is no danger in his nobility of losing him to the universe or merely living in the moment because tomorrow may not be the same. I know that he is mine for the rest of my life. Not forever, only the doctor almost lasts forever, but a lifetime is enough.

With the doctor in the tardis joy burns too brightly, as though the candle is burning at both ends. It cannot possibly last but now the candle does not seem to have an end. Our days are not numbered in the same way because with the doctor you always knew your time was coming, not when, or how, but you knew that travelling with a perpetual being could never last. Now we can rest.

He is my doctor. He heals the soul with his crooked smile. I am happy and he makes me happy. I guess hat that's the most important thing.

It's funny because has seemingly forgotten but after all this time one question still plays at my mind. Doctor. Doctor who?


End file.
